


Take the Weight

by gehddit



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: First Time, M/M, Slow Build, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 20:08:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7478175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gehddit/pseuds/gehddit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unavoidable tragedy for the team leaves Morgan reeling. Reid only wants to help, but Morgan is resisting.  Tensions build until they have no choice, but to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take the Weight

**Author's Note:**

> Not my show or characters, as is for the best for everyone involved.

    A scream of desperate rage, a flash of silver and the final crack of gunfire to silence it all. It should not have been a shock, the child being shot. He was sick, he had lived through unimaginable torture and he had aimed his gun at the wrong man.

     “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.”  
― H.P. Lovecraft

     The BAU has been called in to assist on a potential family annihilator case. The first set of victims, the Park family, had all been restrained and beaten to death in their home.

  
     “Don’t tell me.” Morgan leans back against the government issued SUV for support, eyes squeezing shut at what he knows is coming next. His hand is nearly crushing the phone, a device that seems programmed to deliver bad news; cancelled dates, interrupted weekends and now another family dead.

  
     “I’m sorry hotcakes, about four miles down the road.” He hears Garcia’s fingers flying over her keyboard and knows he’s about to receive the address.

  
     “That’s close, Reid’s gonna set record time with the geographical profile.” As he says this he catches sight of Reid coming out onto the Parker’s porch, showing Prentiss something Morgan’s too far away to make out.

  
      “Aw, who’s Mr. Silver Lining today?”

  
     “More like Mr. Unbelievably Done With This Case.”

  
      Reid is pointing to the thing in his hand and Prentiss is nodding. She touches Reid’s arm in what Morgan guesses to be a laudatory gesture before pulling out her phone. He disappears back into the house once more and Morgan pushes himself off of the car, heading up the driveway.

  
     “Talk about record time. Does my man need a dose of Dr. Garcia’s sweet lovin’?” She sounds completely unsurprised; none of them handle cases like this well. It doesn’t take any kind of personal connection or tortured past to be affected by an entire family being wiped out in one night.

  
     “Yeah, why don’t you write me a prescription?” Morgan opens the front door and immediately spots Reid in the kitchen in front of a refrigerator that appears to be pieced together entirely by family photos.

  
     “Only for my favorite patient. Over and out!” Morgan snaps the phone shut, getting a quick glance from Reid before he’s back to analyzing the refrigerator door.

  
     “Garcia?” He begins removing the magnets and their contents, lining them up on the counter.

  
     “Now how did you know that? And please don’t tell me you’re psychic now, I’m already scared of that brain of yours enough as it is.”

  
     “Given that our jobs are centered around predicting behavior one would think you’d be happy to have a psychic on your team.”

  
     “Guess I can’t argue with that.” Morgan watches Reid sift through the different photographs and art projects, paying close attention to the family photos.

  
      “You were smiling.” Reid’s brain seems to have taken off without him again.

  
     “What?”

  
      “When you came in just now you were smiling. We’re in the house of a family that was just brutally murdered and someone was able to make you smile. Only Garcia can do that for you.” There’s a hint of a smile on Reid’s face now as he begins sorting the pictures into different piles, his system lost on Morgan.

  
      “You profilin’ me?” He takes a guess at sorting one of the photographs, a young girl beaming in front of what looks like an ice cream shop, throwing it in the pile consisting mostly of pictures of her by herself. Reid huffs, snatching the picture up and shooting Morgan his best impression of a glare. Morgan grins.

  
      “Yes, and you’re consistent interfering behavior as well as your inability to let anyone ---“ he grabs another photo from Morgan’s hand--- “ _do their work_ , leads me to believe that you, Derek Morgan, are obnoxious.”

  
     “Sounds serious.” He doesn’t even try for a straight face.

  
     “You should seek immediate treatment.”

  
      “Well then _Dr_. Reid,” he puts his hand over the stack Reid had just been reaching for, leaning over until his mouth is right next to Reid’s ear and lowers his voice to a whisper, “treat me.” Morgan’s so close he can feel the heat flood Reid’s face and leans back just in time to see the expertly executed eye roll.

  
     “I have three PhD.s and am still completely under qualified for whatever’s wrong with you.” Futilely tugging at the pile of pictures resting under Morgan’s weight, Reid lets out a defeated sigh, and finally looks up at him. They’re closer than Morgan realized. He can see the red fading from Reid’s cheeks and his fingers itch.

  
     “Interrupting something?” Prentiss deadpans as she enters the kitchen, not phased in the slightest at finding her coworkers practically nose to nose.

  
     Reid however, jumps about a foot in the air, the pictures finally making their way out from under Morgan’s hand and spilling all over the floor. Morgan laughs, bending down to help collect the scattered papers, a satisfied hitch shaping his mouth at the look of embarrassment on Reid’s face. Emily looks taken aback by the enormity of his reaction for a moment before giving her head a small shake and joining them on the floor.

  
     “Their refrigerator could have doubled as a scrapbook.” Prentiss had used the counter to lever herself up from the floor, almost knocking another pile over on the way and is now looking over the mass of pictures in amazement.

  
     “They’re very family centric.” Reid is squinting in his efforts to place the pictures back in their small section of open countertop without disrupting the rest of his system. “Did Hotch know anything about the boy?”

  
      “Oh, yes!” Emily lights up, seeming to remember why she had come in, in the first place. “His name is Michael, Garcia found a file on him.” She pulls out her phone, scanning through the endless messages they are constantly receiving. “There! Michael Park, went missing in Michigan five years ago at age 11.”

  
     “They ever find him?” There’s no optimism in Morgan’s question, all three agents fully aware and unfazed that he’s asking after a body not a person.

  
     “The investigation didn’t yield much, looks like they bounced from dead end to dead end. He was presumed dead a year later.”

  
     “That’s a long time to search, for an investigation with no leads.” He wishes it wasn’t surprising, but with kids that age most cops give up after the few months, unofficially of course, but it hurts the investigation all the same.

  
     “It looks like the family fought hard to keep the investigation open.”  Emily clearly shares Morgan's sentiment that the family's efforts should not have been necessary.

  
     “So why didn’t we know about him and how did we find out about him?” Quickly scanning what they pulled from the refrigerator, Morgan sees no sign of the boy having ever been a part of this family. Propping her hands on her hips, Emily stares Reid down with her typical look of begrudged admiration.

  
     “Reid found a photo of him in the back of a picture frame on the mother’s night stand.”

  
     “And you’re trying to tell me you’re not psychic.”  

     Reid ignores him.

  
     “The Parker’s moved from Bayo, Michigan, a place that pretty much redefines ‘small town’ with a current population of 2,583. A town that size doesn’t have the resources to digitize old records, so it wouldn’t have come up in any of Garcia’s searches.”

  
     “Then where did we get our file?”

  
     “After I told Hotch about the picture he called the Bayo Sheriff’s Department to see if there was anything we were missing.” She paused a moment, trying to hold back a smile. “They faxed it to us.”

  
     “Bet my baby girl loved that.” Morgan can’t help but grin just picturing the look on her face when she heard the delivery method.

  
      “She sent me this.” Passing Morgan her phone, he holds it so that both he and Reid can see the selfie of Garcia and the fax machine with a paper she clearly sent herself. ‘Trapped in 1989. Do not come for me. Will discover TSwift.’

  
     “What’s a TSwift?” Reid looks around at Morgan, that wide eyed expression he gets when they know something he doesn’t. Morgan only gapes at him. “Oh it’s something dirty isn’t it?” He pushes the phone away, rolling his eyes at their assumed vulgarity.

  
     “Wait, do you seriously not know who Taylor Swift is? Do you live a life completely void of internet or television?” Frowning, Prentiss grabs her phone back.

  
     “It’s a who?” Eyes dart back and forth between them, Reid attempting to gauge whether or not this is something he should actually care about.

  
     “You know for someone who knows everything, you really don’t know shit.” Morgan is laughing, watching Reid shake his head as Emily pushes her phone closer and closer to his face, scrolling through what appeared to be every documented picture of Taylor Swift.

   
     “Ok, but whoever this is I would be right to say that she has nothing to do with the case?”

  
     “Touchy, touchy.” Morgan knew he was right, but a few minutes distraction is worth the therapy of a laugh.

   
     “Barring some fairly extreme circumstances, Taylor Swift is not relevant to our case, no.” As soon as the case was mentioned Emily had turned her attention back to the countertop, clearly having recovered from Reid’s lack of cultural awareness.

  
     “Can I take a look at that picture you found?” He had been asking Reid, but it’s Emily who slips it out of her jacket pocket and passes it to him. It’s a yearbook picture, small like it had been cut right from the page. Morgan can picture the mother painstakingly trimming along the edges, fighting the tremble of her hands. There are no tear stains, but he can’t stop imagining her crying. In his peripheral vision he catches Reid edging closer, watching him. Faster than Reid can react, Morgan throws his arm around him, pulling him into his side and giving his shoulder a firm pat. “Nice find man.”

  
      “Congratulate me when it actually helps the case.” His eyes are focused on the counter, but Morgan thinks he feels Reid lean into him for a moment before quickly wiggling out of Morgan’s grip. Grabbing his notepad from the table, Reid begins labeling each stack with near illegible scribbles.

  
     “So given that none of us are going to decipher this fabled system of yours, am I calling in the troops?” Emily has given up, still taking in information from the photos, but unable to figure out how they’re organized.

  
     “Uh, yeah, no—let’s—let’s take this to the station.” Shifting uncomfortably, Reid keeps his eyes on Michael's photo.

  
     “You think it’s a good idea to move it?” Prentiss looked dubious, shooting Morgan a look to make sure they were on the same page.

  
     “Yeah man, seems like that’s just asking for trouble.”

  
     “I just don’t want—I don’t think we should talk about it here.” The air felt very heavy for a moment, a weight that they were supposed to have become impervious to at the beginning. He couldn’t tell if in that moment it became heavier or they became weaker. Morgan’s eyes cut to Reid, searching for an explanation and finding nothing, but an averted gaze.

  
     “All right, I’ll get the forensics team in here to pack up these boxes, I’m guessing you’re gonna wanna supervise?” Reid gives an emphatic nod. “So Prentiss that leaves you to get the team together.”

  
      Answers never came easily, but they need them to come quickly. There’s too much at stake, for these families and for the team.

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued...


End file.
